last night was talking to a guy regarding lead generation campaign and he came back to me telling the leads are generated through cold calling, and is through call center process... what whatz actually cold ... thats should b calling only??
Its the lowest form of selling something to someone. You call phone numbers of strangers (non clients) and try to convince them to buy from you. If this job doesn't pay good then I wouldn't waste my breath.
Cold Calling is hassle. You will get a lot of annoyed people and to generate leads you will have to have an existing database of past customers.
I like to send a letter, signed by myself, to the MD or CEO first and end it saying that i will call next week, and i always aquaint myself with their existing business and only try to sell stuff they might actually be iterested in, if they say that they haven't received my letter i ask if it's ok for me to call back at a later date, by which time they should have received my letter, and if they say ok then i call back, though i believe this is known as warm calling, i'm sure it still annoys ppl
Cold calling is difficult for all the reasons mentioned above, plus, the leads are not qualified, so it's the marketing equivalent of picking through garbage to find a diamond. And you'll have to pick through tons of garbage to find that diamond. Cold calling for B2B isn't as difficult though as cold calling B2C - that's just pure misery.
Cold calling work well especially if you have large customer database and something decent for offering.
Yes, and of course you'll need some really sharp solicitors with skins as thick as a rhino. That type of sales call is brutal. In a B2B cold call you need to get past the receptionist, even if you have a name. Then you have to get past the secretary, or assistant, or both. Then you have to pitch to (in most cases) a business executive that: 1. Has better things to do with his/her time than listen to a sales pitch over the phone. 2. Has most likely heard a slight variation of the same pitch you're giving from another salesperson, for the same product or service, very recently. 3. Has a policy of not buying anything over the phone. 4. Enjoys torturing telemarketers, and wasting their time. 5. Will curse you out, belittle you for being a telemarketer, then hang up on you. But you can do ok if you DO THE FOLLOWING: NEVER GIVE UP! - BE PERSISTENT! - FOLLOW UP! - HAVE EXPERT KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE ...just don't call me
I've had enough of cold calling, I really admire people whose job is to cold call throughout the months.
There are basically seven traditional forms of lead generation, of which telephone and/or in-person cold calling is one of them. In-person cold calling is so labor intensive (vis-a-vis telephone work) that it is rarely used any more. Do to the National Do Not Call registry in the U.S., cold calling to consumers in the U.S. is really hard to do for a small business because they must first run their list against the registry or face potential legal action and huge fines. B2B cold calling is still allowed, though with voice mail and caller id, it has become much less efficient, as well. Done well, however, cold calling can produce very high quality leads as you will see from my list below, which I offer in descending order of quality lead that it produces: Customer Referrals Third Party Referrals PR Telemarketing Direct Mail Advertising Trade Shows I have a small, hobby website that offers free advice to salespeople and have more details about these lead generation methods. I even turned this topic into a white paper that I would be happy to send to anyone that PM's me.
I work for a financial services company, so I'm very familiar with leads and marketing as well. A cold call with leads could be something along the lines of a trigger pull then calling the client. For example: The client has a student loan through company A. Company B then pulls that clients credit report for an auto loan and the credit bureaus report to company A that the client had credit pulled for an auto loan (that have to pay for this lead). Company A then cold calls the client and pitches the auto loan. Over simplified of course, but you get the idea.
Cold calling is tough business but it is vital to sales. Our company cold calls retailers on a daily business. It's the surest way to get new accounts.
Cold calling can be a great way of getting leads. It's really all about offering somebody something to put them in a better place than where they are now. It's really that simple and it's how you go about it that will determine whether you are successful or not. Once you have got your leads get somebody else to qualify them; once this has been done you have great leads that will convert to sales. I would go so far as to say these are even better leads than those that come from people who contact you because they are simply buyers that you have bought into the market earlier than they had anticipated.
I remember in my early college days, I had a job doing cold-calling. That was extremely rough and back then, people weren't as annoyed as they are today. People are still doing it though, I can't count how many times I've been called with an offer for cheaper prices on toner cartridges.